So the hatemail dubbed me THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!! (sic) So I will wear that with pride, cuntfuckers. It's like The Outlaw Josie Wales only better, right? I mean, did he have a fully capitalised THE, an extra-long dramatic pause, and two exclamation marks? No, he did not. Chickenshit.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom

Dear David Cosson,

We are grateful for your response to our "Homosexual Agenda" blog entry. We of the International Sodomite Conspiracy are always happy to enter into debate with those still not quite "on board", as they say, with our project for world domination, in the hope that you will, perhaps, come to a more illuminated state as regards your predicament. There are those who advise us not to "waste our time" on intransigent cranks like yourself, but we actually quite enjoy the back-and-forth of it all, the badinage and banter. We apologise for the length in advance, but we do like to be thorough, you know.

Let us open, then, with a comment on your title:

OPPOSING THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA(The greatest moral battle of our time)

David Cosson

The greatest moral battle of our time? We quite agree, David Cocksucker. This is indeed the single most crucial battle in the field of modern mores. Why, it is also the single most crucial battle in the field of modern ethics. You understand the difference here, right, David Cocksucker? Ethics. Where you use a combination of reason and passion -- we'll call it "wisdom" for short -- to judge the rightness and/or wrongness of behaviour. Versus mores. Where your only judgement is whether to obey or disobey the unquestioned (and for many unquestionable) societal imperatives of whatever authority, real or imagined, you have abrogated aforesaid wisdom to.

I hope you're not offended by my use of the affectionate nickname "Cocksucker". You do understand that as far as we of the International Sodomite Conspiracy are concerned it's not a derogatory term. Think of it as like one black man calling another "nigger". We're just trying to make you feel included, like you were one of us. Far be it from us to throw personal insults just for the fun of "bigot-baiting".

Anyway. Yes, you are right, David Cocksucker. This is the greatest moral battle of our time. For we who have signed our names in blood and spunk to the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom (to give the Homosexual Agenda its true name) seek nothing less than the complete destruction of the moral fabric of society. We don't need your steenking mores, David Cocksucker. We have ethical judgement. We have the aesthetics of empathy, a passionate reason which drives us to love our fellow man (in all senses of the word). Moral fabric? We're gonna pull that rug right out from under your knees, burn it with the flag you worship as false idol and light our post-coital cigarettes on the flames.

Let me just get my Zippo.

"Lo, this only I have found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Ecclesiastes 7:29. Let's face it, the prophet is not talking about the wheel, electricity or the i-phone. The word "inventions" is being used in the pejorative. In this context, it stands for a "fiction." American Dictionary of the English Language –1828.

American Dictionary of the English Language? Now, there's a contradiction in terms right there, David Cocksucker. Not that I wish to insult the linguistic abilities of a nation which can't even use the word "liberal" correctly, but -- no, tell a lie, I do wish to insult that nation. Apologies to any innocent passers-by out there who're simply American rather than Americanist, but, well, y'all are just begging for it. I mean, how can one resist slagging the language of a country so hidebound in its own grandiose delusions that it would invent the term "un-American"?

How can one not mock the self-same ideological blinkering that renders so many incapable of even concieving that their scraps of holy writ, their sacred idols of moral authority -- Bible, Constitution, TV Weekly -- might not be universally recognised as worthy of servile reverence? You Americanist pseudo-Christians, you slay us, you really do.

No, really, you do.

But here's a wee newsflash, David Cocksucker. We don't give a fuck whether the prophet was talking about the dildo, orgone energy or the internet porn site. We don't give a fuck if the term "inventions" was being used in the pejorative. We don't give a fuck what your Bible or your Dictionary or your Constitution says. The first line of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom says all that need be said about such rags:

Fuck that shit.

One of the "many inventions" confronting society today is that homosexuality is normal and acceptable.

Fuck normal, David Cocksucker. We don't claim to be normal. We're abnormal, unusual, irrregular, non-standard, atypical, queer. So fucking what, David Cocksucker? It's not like normality is a requirement of acceptability, is it? Is it normal to be a prophet? Or the saviour of humanity, for that matter? Was your beloved Christ normal or did he, perhaps, stand out just an ickle bit from the crowd? A guy who lets himself get nailed to a cross for his beliefs -- that's pretty fucking extraordinary, David Cocksucker, pretty out-of-the-ordinary, pretty atypical, non-standard, irregular, unusual, abnormal. Don't you think it's maybe just a little... queer? When you think about it, your shepherd has more in common, David Cocksucker, with another Shepard, one whose crucifix was a split-rail fence, his Golgotha a hillside in Wyoming, than he has with you and your ilk, you multitude of mediocrities to whom normality is so essential. I'll leave it to you to imagine who we think you have more in common with in that other crucifixion story.

Why should we claim to be normal? To you, it seems, this goes hand in hand with being acceptable, an understandable illusion given your abrogation of ethical judgement to the dictates of morality. That's how mores work, after all, imposing prescriptions and proscriptions on behaviour, positioning each act upon some spectrum of acceptability -- required, encouraged, discouraged or forbidden. Incapable of navigating the ethical minefields of everyday life, your only recourse is blind obedience to mores as social norms. To be good, you think, means to follow these mores, to live within these norms. No wonder, then, that you confuse normal and acceptable, you pitiable mockery of a human being, unable even to contemplate that those of us who retain our ethical judgement can apply that judgement to those very mores, those very norms.

And you know, David Cocksucker, we don't even claim to be acceptable. This is the terminology of your infantile morality, of the infantile moralities of most societies, past, present or future. We freely accept that homosexuality, in your terms, is on the wrong side of your little line in the sand, at best discouraged, at worst forbidden, and never on any account acceptable. Just as mixed-race marriage has been (and is still in many quarters) considered contrary to many infantile moralities, so too is homosexuality to yours.

Read my lips, David Cocksucker: we don't give a fuck. Your infantile morality is as illegitimate in its condemnation of our "perversion" as it would be in a condemnation of "miscegenation". The fearless faggotry proudly celebrated in the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom may not be acceptable to you, but that simply speaks to your inadequacies as a human being. You can't handle the idea of homosexuality, can't even handle the idea that others can. "Acceptable" is not a judgement of our moral failing here, but of your incapacity, of your inability to accept, of the critical and terminal crippling of your ethical faculties.

Understand this: we neither need nor want your acceptance. As a wise man once said, I am not innarested in your condition. Even were you to question and revise your infantile morality -- as many in this modern era have done -- and find it within you to slide homosexuality's position on your spectrum of acceptability from forbidden, to discouraged, to neutral, or even to encouraged, we would still scorn your conceited illusion that your opinion is worth a shit, your arrogant self-deceit that we are subject to your mores, whatever they may be. We care naught for your petty societies, your countries and religions. We are the Elders of Sodom, one nation under the quilt.

Although homosexuality has been practiced for centuries, its adherents have always represented a distinct minority (around 5 %), which should tell us something about its normalcy—if it were normal and good, wouldn't we see much more of it? Homosexuality has also been reviled in every world culture at one time or the other.

Yeah? And? So? What?

How many centuries has Judaism been practiced for? How much of a distinct minority have the gypsies been? How many other groups of outsiders have been reviled wherever a scapegoat was required, an "other" to be defined as marginal, made the recipient of your group-bonding hate?

There is no record of homosexuality being "celebrated" or "embraced" or even "tolerated" until very recent history.

Leaving aside the fact that homosexuality is a modern construction, leaving aside the innumerable cultures in which same-sex couplings were considered de rigeur, I'll simply ask:

Have you forgotten Sodom, David Cocksucker?

Have you forgotten that great city in the valley of salt, as described in your own scriptures? Or do you say that Sodom was not destroyed for its celebration of this "sin"? Do you call your God a liar, David Cocksucker?

In fact, in most cultures, homosexuality was classified as a crime.

And in so many, many cultures, slavery was not. This is the problem with mores, David Cocksucker. This is why your abrogation of ethical judgement, your subjugation to received dogma, renders you so pitiable. Wherever men, women and children gather in judgement to condemn a queer to jail, to stone him, burn him at the stake, or bind him naked to a split-rail fence, beat him into a coma, and leave him to a cold death on a winter hillside, you are there with self-righteous endorsement, because you have been told that this is right and do not question. Wherever men, women and children scorn the rights of others, shackle them and sell them, you are there with chains and whip, because you have been told that this is right and do not question. Wherever men, women and children sing in celebration of the brutal slaughter of an innocent, where the mores of their cultures cast an ancient murder as a ritual sacrifice, a holy butchering, a moral killing, you are there, voice raised in song with theirs, washing yourself in blood, because you have been told that this is right and do not question.

You have no name, cocksucker. I strip it from you, because you have no right to it, because you have abandoned it, man of the mob. You are only one voice in a chorus, one face in a crowd, one hand raised to throw a stone. You have no name, cocksucker, save the name of "Legion".

In American history, homosexuality has been almost unanimously rejected by the public at large. Not until the national media began promoting homosexuality through favorable depictions—celebrity Ellen DeGeneres "outing" herself on a sitcom TV show, for example—everyone understood it for what it was.

And in American history, slavery was almost unanimously accepted by your kind, man of the mob, until the challenges began in Quaker meetings, in the writings of philosophers, the speeches of agitators, the unfavourable depictions laid before the masses by opponents of the slave trade. Until then everyone "understood" slavery for"what it was" -- "natural", "normal", "moral".

It is despicable that the liberal media have made it part of their agenda to bring homosexuality into the "mainstream" and force its acceptance on everyone under threat of accusations such as "homophobic" or "intolerant."

No, it is admirable that in contrast to those forces in the media who court your favour with a pseudo-Christian, Americanist agenda, alongside those who care only about ratings and sponsors and will happily attempt to court both liberals and conservatives for the sake of a better bottom line, yes, there are those who stand firm in their ethical judgements, advocating an enlightened attitude and pointing out the blatant preudice of their opponents.

The reason acceptance of homosexuals and their "lifestyle" was never an issue for literally hundreds of years was because everyone understood homosexuality for what it was: a deviant form of sexual behavior that is unnatural and immoral. Nearly everyone has an instinctive aversion to homosexuality; and the sexual practices involved between homosexuals are generally abhorrent to most people.

Never mind your continued conflation of the ordinary and the good. Never mind your unfounded equation of divergence from a norm with violation of divine decree. We, the signatories of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom, accept that, in your infantile morality, you cannot help but see your conformity as a "virtue" and our deviance as a "vice". We simply sneer at your brazen display of your own insecurities, the way you lay neurotic nausea before us, as if this irrational disgust and dread legitimised your attitude. We find it risible that you bitch about being labelled homophobes then tacitly admit that your beliefs and acts are born of an irrational abhorrence, justify this simply on the basis that "most people" share this same irrational abhorrence.

Yes, it is natural to hate without understanding why we do so. It is natural to loathe and despise, fear and detest, abhor and revile, to be sickened and disgusted without understanding why we are reacting so, without ever asking ourselves if such dread and nausea are really just. It is natural to respond to deviance with deep-seated enmity, to react with powerful emotions of antipathy. It is natural to never question the unreason of your revulsion. It is natural to be a coward and a fool about one's own neurosis. It is natural to be in thrall to your pathology. It is natural to hate so strongly you become convinced the very hate itself is proof of its own justice. It is natural to be a bigot.

And in your travesty of a philosophy, cocksucker, if it is natural then it is good.

Often, when listening to a parent discuss their feelings about their child who is now a gay person, they often say that when they first learned of their child's orientation, they were shocked, and disgusted to learn what their child was doing. Later, through a process of inculcation, perpetrated mainly by the media and other politically motivated individuals and groups, they came to "accept" and "embrace" their child's "alternative lifestyle."

I dare say there are few parents keen to visualise their own son sucking cock or being fucked up the ass, but then I dare say there's few children who are keen to visualise their parents fucking any which way. Your disgust is like that of a child, revolted at the notion of their parents doing it -- yuck, not my parents!

Yuck, not two men!

And I rather doubt that any parent of a queer kid would profess to being "inculcated" by the media, or pressure groups, or individuals, into not recoiling in disgust from their own child. I have no idea how many parents utterly dismantle that knee-jerk reaction, for how many it diminishes but never wholly dissipates, how many never overcome their distaste, simply recognise they have no say over the choices of a child now grown and with the right to live their own life, how many never reach even that level of conciliation, their child's sexuality remaining a bone of contention. Whatever attitude the parent of a queer kid comes to over time it's far less likely to be the product of indoctrination campaigns by we Elders of Sodom than it is to be the product of active investigation into what exactly their child's sexuality means to them, how they feel about it, really, honestly, whether they will let their own distaste ruin their relationship with a loved one.

We are not the ones with the re-education camps, cocksucker. We are not the ones with boot camps in the wilderness where a queer kid may be dragged against their will, to have the buggery brainwashed out of them through a ceaseless ordeal of humiliation.

To argue that the initial negative reaction, experienced by most everyone, is "intolerant" or "homophobic" is just plain stupid. We are talking about millions upon millions of good, caring, loving, intelligent, non-judgmental people the world over, who, utilizing all the principles they have learned in their lives about caring about others and treating people equal, etc., instinctively feel that it is not right and not normal, and if propositioned by a homosexual, would be naturally repulsed. Have all these people somehow, over a period of centuries, gotten it wrong?

To be in thrall to that reaction is where it becomes a phobia, a chronic condition of acute adverse reaction rather than a mild knee-jerk response of disgust. This is what we call homophobia... for rather obvious reasons. To argue on the basis of this compulsive enmity that we have to fight the change in attitudes to homosexuality, defend the historical animosity in which it is not celebrated, embraced or even tolerated -- this is to argue explicitly for intolerance, to argue that we should (continue to) be intolerant. Are you of such little intellect, cocksucker, that you don't understand the connection between saying, "we should not tolerate this" and being called "intolerant"?

And what of those not ruled by their knee-jerk reaction but who do react that way? What of those who say, "Each to their own and all, but... yuck, two men!"? Have all of them gotten it wrong?

Each to their own. I'm not a fan of brussels sprouts at all, but I'm very fond of brocolli. I understand there are some vile perverts who hate brocolli, but love those vegetable snotballs. Which of us has "gotten it wrong"? Which of us are acting on God-given intuition, and which of us have been led astray into wicked abomination by Satan, eating vegetables that it is patently unnatural and therefore immoral to eat? Quick, check the Bible; it must say something about brocolli and brussels sprouts. I mean, it covers locusts and molluscs, for crying out loud.

What do you think of snails and oysters, by the way? Just out of curiosity?

Is homosexuality indeed "normal" and, thus, moral?

Do I have to get a cattle-prod to stop you confusing "normative" and "ethical", "ordinary" and "good"?

That question is more probative than whether homosexuality has a biological cause. Have we as a society decided that we can't judge what is moral and not moral anymore? Do we share the same type of unprincipled conscience as Pontius Pilate, who, when deciding whether to concede to the demands of the Jews in their attempt to crucify Jesus, asked him "What is Truth?" The politically correct and immoral of today would ask: "what is moral?"

No, cocksucker. We say you never were able to judge what's moral and what's not, because judgement requires reasoning; all you have ever done is blindly follow what you're told, believe one thing is moral and another not because that is the received wisdom. We say you and your kind, with all your infantile moralities, are indeed the heirs of Pilate; faced with the baying mob's disgust you do not challenge their desire for blood (Have all these people somehow, over a period of centuries, gotten it wrong?), you do not exercise an independent judgement (In fact, in most cultures, homosexuality was classified as a crime.), but rather wash your hands of it and turn to a spiritual authority in the hope he'll tell you what is truth, or at least offer some gnomic vagueness you can interpret to support your own unquestioned emotional response ("Lo, this only I have found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." Ecclesiastes 7:29.).

We say we know exactly what "moral" is: it is your unprincipled conscience in subjugation to irrational prejudice, in servitude to the mob, validated only by appeals to authority.

It is interesting that liberals, the main defenders and promoters of homosexuality, almost never assert that being gay is "moral." They merely declare that it is not a "choice." They know that to take a position claiming that homosexuality is moral would be laughable, because it would mean that, in all of recorded history, virtually everyone has gotten it wrong except them. Their own premise (that being gay is not a choice) leads one to the conclusion that homosexuality is not moral, which means that the position of gay advocates is based solely on human and secular grounds. Most people naturally want to look to a higher authority when deciding on such important moral issues.

No. Most people want to be able to reference a higher authority when rationalising their bigotry. There is no decision being made by them; they have already surrendered their ethical judgement to an infantile morality, already decided that they know what's right and wrong, because disgust tells them what's "natural" and "unnatural" All they need now is a demagogue who claims to speak for a higher authority, whose hate-filled rantings can be legitimised with the gloss of "scripture", made the foundation stone of a movement, an institution, a grand empire of moral absolutism with this holy Hitler, this sacred Stalin, enthroned over all.

Hardly surprising that when your infantile morality holds the reins of power, defenders of homosexuality make the mistake of accepting your terms of debate. They believe that all they have to do is prove to you or persuade you that their sexuality is a matter of birth rather than choice, nature rather than nurture. They believe that you will then be forced by your own logic to accept that if it's natural it cannot be immoral.

We, the Elders of Sodom, make no such mistake in assuming a capacity for rational thought from you.

The position gays take is: "we enjoy committing sodomy and other repulsive sexual acts because we are attracted in that manner, but we don't choose to do what we do. We have no control whatsoever. We were born this way. We are only expressing our love for another person, so don't question what we do. More importantly, accept our actions; embrace and cherish what we do or we will fight to silence you and accuse you of being hateful homophobes" (their favorite incendiary terms).

Not me, cocksucker, and not any of the signatories of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom. Our position is that we do it because we want to. We have control. We were not born this way. We choose it. We might be expressing love but, you know, quite often we just want a good hard fuck. And this is our prerogative. You can question what we do, but we will answer you in no uncertain terms. You can accept, embrace and cherish or reject, revile and condemn. Say what you will; we will respond in kind. And if we tell you to shut the fuck up, call you out on the irrational foundations of your rejection, revulsion and condemnation... deal with it, cocksucker. We might well accuse you of being hateful homophobes. There might well be a reason for that, cocksucker.

Oh, and you should have figured out by now, that I much prefer "cocksucker" as my favourite incendiary term when it comes to homophobes. It has such a delicious taste in the mouth, salty as sweat or semen.

As you can see, gays and their supporters can never defend homosexuality on moral, spiritual, historical or religious grounds.

We might simply point you here, cocksucker, to the cultures of ancient Greece in which gods and heroes, kings and shepherds, athletes and artists, all engaged in same-sex couplings, and in which these relationships were often idealised as the very height of male virtue. And more. From the oldest story ever set down in writing, that of Gilgamesh, through the homosexual presthoods of the Neolithic Near-East, through the tale of Achilles and Patroklus, through the philosophy of Plato, the empire of Alexander the Great, the poetry of Virgil, the samurai of Japan, and on, across the world and up to the present day, time and again we have seen same-sex couplings understood as integral aspects of various cultures, even to the extent that morally, spiritually, historically, religiously, a same-sex relationship would be considered all but mandatory.

But we do not bring these cultures up to defend our homosexuality with historical precedents. We see no need to use your infantile defence of "everyone else was doing it". We bring them up only to inspire fear in you, cocksucker. For you should know that this has been the case in the past, and fear that it will be again. And it will, cocksucker. By all that is sworn in the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom, it will.

We are taking back our world.

One of the most deceptive and persistent arguments made by gay advocates is that people who oppose homosexuality are hateful and judgmental towards gays.They say that everyone should "accept" gays. The majority of people who are against homosexuality do accept gay people and don't hate them at all. They work with them, laugh with them and live with them without discriminating against them or hating them personally. What they don't "accept" is the idea, the concept, the notion, the thought of homosexuality. In other words, it is merely a stand for principle and values, not a personal attack against any individuals. Contrariwise, it is the gay advocates who regularly make personal attacks against, and don't "accept," people who disagree with them.

The old claim to "hate the sin but not the sinner" is an amusing piece of sophistry, but how well does it stand up to scrutiny? As should be very clear by now, this is not about acceptance. Your restraint from personal attacks, acts or explicit statements born of hate, outright discrimination -- this is nothing to be proud of, cocksucker. It is no more than we expect from you out of common decency. You understand? This is required from you if you wish to be considered as a member of civilised society. But this is only the beginning, for we demand not simply that you bridle your unhealthy prejudices. We demand that you judge them, that you stand before the mirror of your soul, and scrutinise your own infantile morality. This is what is required from you if you wish to be considered as a mature member of civilised society.

You will never do this while you let yourself be ruled by ignorance and self-delusion, disgust and fear.

How much clearer can it be? In addition to being inherently repulsive, homosexuality is not expressed in nature, in either the plant or the animal kingdoms. If anyone was to witness two female chimpanzees, for example, being intimate, or two male horses engaged in sexual acts, the sight would be disturbing, would it not? What if it happened with regularity in the entire animal world? Why is it any different for mankind? The evolutionists believe that man is just an advanced species—a member of the animal kingdom, so why shouldn't we have the same negative reaction when a man or a woman decides to have sexual relations with someone of their own sex?

Is it of any purpose here to even begin to recount even a fraction of the overwhelming documentary evidence of same-sex couplings in the animal kingdom, in everything from bonobos to horses (the very examples offered above), dolphins to swans? Is it ignorance or self-delusion on your part, cocksucker, that leads you to these patent falsehoods? We say that it is both -- an ignorance founded in self-delusion and a self-delusion born of ignorance, the two feeding into each other, in a vicious circle that impoverishes your judgement by denying it the facts. And why this willful disregard for the truth?

I don't know about anyone else, but I do not cherish the day that, because no one has the courage to resist it any longer, gays feel free to exhibit their "love" for their partners in public. Imagine being in the line at McDonalds with your child, and two gay men begin kissing in front of you. Or being at the movie theatre with gay people being intimate right next to you. That is a society that is disgusting to contemplate. But, it will happen if more people don't take a visible, vocal stand.

Yes, surely these images must inspire disgust, repulsion, horror, fear. Surely we must react with an automatic and deep-seated repulsion, the sort of reaction termed by psychologists a "phobia". What shall we call this reaction? How about "homosexualophobia"? That's rather long, though, so perhaps we should shorten it to something more concise. How about "homophobia"?

How many times, cocksucker, can you complain about pernicious accusations of hateful homophobia then follow with an explicit argument that says we do and should base our beliefs on the hatred and disgust that homosexuality inspires in us?

If homosexuality is normal, why does the physical appearance of many women who engage in it change so drastically, so that they begin to look like men, and are very unattractive? "Butch" is a term that has been used to describe this phenomenon seen in many lesbian women. It's not just that the natural femininity of those women has been voluntarily sacrificed; their sexual practices, rooted in their abnormal lusts, actually alters their physical appearance. The same is true of homosexual men. They become effeminate looking, and often their speech and gait change dramatically, especially in those who don't try to hide their affliction. There is no way that these effects can be seen as anything other than unnatural in the extreme. But you never hear gays or their supporters address this issue; instead, the person raising it would be attacked as being hateful and mean.

We love your crackpot notion that being gay makes women ugly, really we do, that going down on another woman, or fucking her with a strap-on dildo, or whatever, will somehow magically... what? Make a lesbian grow an adam's apple? Give her a square and manly jaw? Stubble on her chin? There's a certain charm to the absurdity of the idea, and your blithe ignorance of the converse role of "femme". There's a certain amusement factor to your similar stereotyping of gay men as lisping, mincing nancy boys, the way you overlook those types of gay we like to call "muscle marys" or "rough trade". But if you really believe your stereotypes to be fair pictures of a link between sexuality and physical appearance and behaviour, surely you're putting the cart before the horse. Might you not ask yourself if such strange features, such distinct physical appearance and behaviour might not indicate a difference deeper than the superficial signifier of sexual orientation, a deviance at the very core of this person's identity, of their nature? The stereotypically flaming queer is likely to be flouncing long before they're fucking, cocksucker, hanging with the girls while all the boys play football, singing torch songs into a hairbrush in their bedroom, putting on a show for friends. Other kids will call them faggots before any of them have the first idea of what it means. Their effeminacy goes back so far into their childhood, one might begin to suspect that they were born that way.

But we, the Elders of Sodom, don't make that claim, cocksucker. Science may tell us one day that our sexual orientation is a biological predisposition, but the evidence we've seen says only that, not that it's predetermined, so we choose to say we had a choice and we have made it. We choose to be queer, and if we flame at all it's with the fucking sword of fire we ripped out of the cold dead hands of the angel your God sent to burn our city.

We, the Elders of Sodom, are no girly-boys. We are William Burroughs with a gun in one hand, a syringe in the other. We are Jean Arthur Rimbaud running guns in Africa. We are Alexander the Great conquering the known world. We are the Theban Band of warrior-lovers. We are Achilles mourning Patroklus. We are Herakles fucking Iolaus. We are Apollo and Dionysus walking in fields of hyacinths and narcissi. We are Gilgamesh building civilisation. We are more man than you will ever be, cocksucker. We fuck men and are fucked by them. We have no fear of being thought unmanly. We, the Elders of Sodom, know that you fear us, and that makes you our bitch, cocksucker. Not that we wish to be misogynist here, but the word pussy just seems so appropriate, when we think of how afraid you are of us.

It's interesting that gays want to frame the homosexual issue as one that concerns their desire and right to merely have a loving relationship with other people of the same sex. This is just a diversion. No one would take the position that a person of one sex cannot love another person of the same sex. Most people are taught to love all men (generically speaking). Gays want to hide their desire to have sexual relations with someone of the same sex under the guise of "love," so that their orientation appears virtuous. There is nothing virtuous about homosexuality.

We, the Elders of Sodom, claim the right to love a person of the same sex, and when we say love we mean both in the sense of eros and in the sense of agape. We claim both. We say that some of us both can and do pair-bond in a sweet fusion of eros and agape in a love as virtuous in a queer couple as it is in a straight marriage. But we see no need to even try to justify the straightforward fuck of sexual love with the respectable veneer of familial love. We know you don't approve of purely carnal love, of "fornication", when it comes to heterosexuals, never mind homosexuals, but we just don't care, cocksucker. We love the flesh, and unlike you we're not so screwed-up we can't revel in it. We say that your sense of shame is the true vice, your unhealthy aversion to eros unbound a dishonouring of the fruits of life. We say that there is nothing virtuous about this spiritual mortification of the flesh.

Also, the current attempt to gain civil "rights" for homosexuals as an oppressed minority is just a screen to shame the rest of society into granting complete approval of the practice of homosexuality, which would provide homosexuals the assurances they seek and strongly desire, that they can continue their practices without any recrimination or guilt.

There is no screen here, cocksucker. We claim the rights that are ours as citizens. We do not seek to shame you into anything -- if you cannot exercise objective judgement, we're certainly not going to encourage your debased mentality of disgust -- and we do not need your approval, but we do require you to treat us with respect. The only assurances we want are that you can no longer mistreat us with impunity you would not have if we were straight. This is called equality, cocksucker, equality under the law.

Gays currently enjoy legal protection for their private sexual conduct. State laws prohibiting sodomy, which existed in nearly every State at late as 1960, were either repealed by some States or were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 20003 (Lawrence v. Texas). But gays and their supporters aren't satisfied. They now want everyone who would oppose the practice of homosexuality on moral grounds to shrink and admit to being intolerant and hateful. They want everyone to openly accept and even embrace their abhorrent behavior.

You openly proclaim your own intolerance and hate, your deep disgust at this "abhorrent behaviour", these are the very "moral grounds" you cite, yet you deny your attitude is one of intolerance and hate. You stand with a cigarette in hand and say, smoking is good, but I am not a smoker. You slug beer out of a can and say, drinking is good, but I am not a drinker. You spit at a black man and say, the black race is inferior, but I am not a racist. You revile homosexuality, saying homosexuality is intolerable and fills me with hate, but I am not intolerant and hateful.

We do not want you to open your arms to us. We want you to open your eyes to yourself.

The vast majority of homosexuals do not enter into permanent, or even long-term monogamous relationships. Statistics show that homosexuals, especially homosexual men, average far more sexual partners over their lifetime than heterosexual men and women—further evidence that homosexuality is a problem about one's choice concerning sexual activity, not an inherited biological reality, and certainly not an emotional desire to just express love or have a relationship with someone of the same sex.

Monogamy is for the swans. We are 99.4 % bonobo, cocksucker, and we like to make with the fuckee-fuckee. If you have a problem with that, take it to your shrink.

Homosexual men also have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexual men, and are much more susceptible to contracting diseases. These are widely known facts.

Oh, but our lives are so much richer than yours, ours relished with lusty liberation, gay abandon, yours crippled by your ethical inadequacies, blinded by your ideological delusions, bound by your moral absurdities, and goaded constantly by your pathological aversions. You are a creature hobbled and chained, blindfolded and driven on by the scourge you meekly accept, stumbling on along a path you cannot see, afraid of what might lie in front of you.

Men and women who are under this "gay" deception are otherwise good people. They are smart, funny, creative, hard working and fun people.

We are certainly sure they come across that way to someone whose argument is witless, humourless, unoriginal, lazy and just plain tiresome.

I have known many gay people and have liked them very much. I have a close family member who is gay. Gays are not bad people; homosexuality is simply an evil that some fall into and are deceived thereby. However, due to constant guilt and society's downward trend in embracing and practicing objective moral truths, gays have decided to aggressively demand acceptance for their chosen sexual practices.

It is you who struggle under the deception. Perhaps you are "otherwise good". Perhaps you and those of your kind are "not bad people". Perhaps you have simply been raised within an infantile morality and never had occassion to question it. Perhaps you should do so now. Perhaps you should look at those smart, funny, creative, hard working and fun people you have known and liked, that close family member who, we would assume, you love. Perhaps you should ask yourself if your disgust at what they do entitles you to treat their sexual choice with gross contempt, grandiose assumptions of your rectitude based on no more than... what? that very contempt? the opinions of the mob? a few scraps of scripture, maybe, from the stone age?

There is one objective moral truth, we say, if there is any that can truly be considered objective. It is that your prime duty as an adult human being is to use all of the facts and faculties you possess, all of your wisdom, all of your reason and passion, to question your own beliefs with utmost rigour, to exercise your ethical judgement independent of the mores shaped and instilled in you by social forces, to ignore the mob outside and the disquiet within, to trust no authority but your own empathy, and ask yourself: what do I say is ethical?

Yes, we are being aggressive in our demands here -- not for acceptance, but for self-knowledge -- but this is not your duty to us, or to any gay men not yet signed up to the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom. It is not your duty to those smart, funny, creative, hard working and fun people you have known and liked. It is not your duty to that close family member.

It is your duty to yourself.

It is crucial that people see homosexuality for what it is: an abnormal sexual attraction and its associated practices. I am sympathetic towards gay people who are confused and believe that their choice is an unavoidable and natural one. However, studies have shown that most gay people feel some degree of guilt about their actions, yet suppress those feelings. However, many gays have actually faced the issue concerning the morality of their behavior, and have changed it; demonstrating that it is, indeed, a moral choice.

It is an aesthetic choice, and ours to make. It is an ethical choice, and ours to make. We will even say that it is a moral choice, and ours to make. We, the Elders of Sodom make it with no sense of guilt, of shame, of sin. You have your own choice to make, David Cosson. (We give you your name back in the hope that it will give you some sense of your individuality, your ethical autonomy.) Your choice is whether your sympathy is sufficient enough to merit the courage required to question your beliefs, to face the terrifying prospect that your disgust at homosexuality might be based in insecurity.

Are you ready to do some actual research on the psychology underlying this reaction of abhorrence? Are you ready to face the possibility that all sorts of shameful assocciations formed in infancy and attached to oral, anal and genital regions might be what makes the idea of a cock in someone's ass so repulsive? Are you ready to face the possibility that it might be anxiety about the power relationships between men that makes the thought so deeply disturbing, so terrifyingly emasculating and submissive as it might be to be penetrated? Are you ready to face the research that shows higher arousal in those who admit to being deeply disgusted by homosexual acts, in comparison to those who do not profess to the same disgust, when the subjects are confronted with gay porn? Are you man enough to face the fact that your own disgust might be born from a panicking need to over-ride any hints of rogue desire, fleeting excitement, at the idea of getting it on with another man?

If you don't have the balls to make that choice, don't tell us what to do with ours.

People don't want to condemn or hate any of their fellow beings for any sin, especially when all of us have done things that we know are wrong or immoral. I believe that some people who condone homosexuality just want to protect gays from other people who would openly judge them and hold them up to scorn and ridicule. No one who commits any type of sinful act should be treated this way; but, neither should their actions be defended if they are wrong. The ideal approach for society to take would be to condemn the sin, not the individual, to love everyone, and to impersonalize the sin by realizing that the error being committed is no different than any other error or sin men engage in. Its cause and ultimate effect are the same, i.e., all sin results from temptation, and it can only truly harm the one not resisting it. Gays should not be scorned or disliked. Their behavior should be. Likewise, the gay community and its supporters should not judge or demonize those who are expressing their deeply held beliefs about an important moral issue.

We, the Elders of Sodom, would never think to judge or demonise you. We love you from your perky little bigot nose down to your little cotton bigot socks (by way of your cute little bigot hard-on). We just cannot condone your unethical beliefs and behaviour, your consistent failures in respect of self-scrutiny, empathy, curiosity, rationality and just plain old-fashioned integrity. We're really quite generous, we think. We cut you a lot of slack. Where you condemn our sexual choices as evil, we largely regard your ethical incapacities as weak. (Some of us are inclined to regard your prejudice as malice rather than cowardice, we admit, but we don't let such uncharitable attitudes hold sway in the general body of the assembly.) Demonisation? We're not the ones who bring metaphysical mumbo-jumbo about Evil Scary Magic Forces into the argument -- the stain of sin, the washing up liquid of salvation, the tasty temptations of Satan, the latter often personified as "demons". You're the ones who characterise our behaviour as having some sort of supernaturally evil quality to it, some sort of demonic miasma of uncleanliness, as vile and pernicious as plates left unwashed after the abomination of -- shock horror! -- a dinner party.

The much bigger problem facing society, and much more troubling, is the attempt by many public figures and the media to sanction and legitimize this abnormal behavior, and to silence and discredit those who consider homosexuality a moral issue. While demanding tolerance for their cause, they simultaneously express intolerance for the views of anyone who doesn't agree with them. In other words, they need to look in the mirror, preferably right after they look up the definition of "hypocrite" in a dictionary.

So we're being damned as intolerant of your opposing views, and damned as hypocrites for advocating tolerance without practicing it. Well, at least you finally admit that you are, in disagreement with us, advocating intolerance.

But let's look at your charge. We, the signatories of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom, you say, are intolerant of intolerance. But how can this be? Isn't this a contradiction? If we were truly tolerant we would tolerate your intolerance, surely? We would tolerate everything, anything, for not to do so would be intolerant, by definition. I imagine you feel very proud of the cleverness of you.

Unfortunately, you think in absolutes and so have little understanding of what tolerance is all about. Tolerance is, by nature, a system of checks and balances. Tolerance is a matter of endurance; it's about how much duress can be taken before the stress is too much to bear -- before it becomes intolerable. To be tolerant is to have a bit of give, to tolerate, to endure that which you'd prefer not to. And so we have a bit of give when it comes to tolerating intolerance.

We do not say we will not tolerate intolerance at all. In fact, we tolerate a fair degree of intolerance in society at large; we call this tolerated intolerance "the law". We, the Elders of Sodom, living at large in your societies, tolerate this form of intolerance if and when it is legitimised by good processes of negotiating fair legislation. We often find ourselves, however, arguing that an unjust law should be repealed because -- as in the case of sodomy prohibitions or segregation -- the intolerance is founded only on prejudice and is, in any decent society, intolerable. This is called "empathy". We often find ourselves arguing against those who say they cannot tolerate this "perversion" or "miscegenation", that no truly virtuous person can tolerate something so "unnatural", "immoral", that we must not tolerate the tolerance... that we must, in other words, criminalise the act. No, we say, this intolerance we must be intolerant of -- not yours, mind, not your personal intolerance, but the institutionalised intolerance of the law -- because it is discrimination. When we get our way the result is called "civil rights".

No, we are not so in thrall to monomaniac absolutes that we think it's all or nothing -- total tolerance or total intolerance. We have no problem in advocating tolerance in general but also recognising that there are certain types of individual acts which cannot be tolerated. We have no problem in advocating tolerance in regard to how the perpetrators are treated but also recognising that many have no real justification for their behaviour other than personal intolerance. Where we're sure the act was motivated by a particular type of personal tolerance we're all too familiar with -- homophobia or racism, bigotry in whatver form -- we call that act a "hate crime".

You can spin your little sophistic logic-circles, David, about whether you're tolerant or intolerant. We have no problem in saying that we're generally pretty tolerant, but we do get a trifle intolerant when it comes to gaybashings, lynchings and the like. We rather think any civilised human being ought to be intolerant of such things. Are you happy to profess to intolerance of murder? We know we are, so we're going to assume the best of you. Are you happy to accept your attitude to other acts you also deem wrong is one of intolerance? It's only consistent. So do you understand now why, given your condemnation of homosexuality, we would label you "intolerant"? And why we might be a little intolerant of an attitude used to argue against our civil rights and validate hate crimes against us.

Don't worry, though. As long as you're not actually trying to beat us to death, you shouldn't run into too much trouble with our intolerance of your intolerance. Not from the Elders of Sodom, anyway.

For too long now, powerful and influential media organizations in this country have essentially been very active advocates and strong supporters of the homosexual cause. This is seen in the many films and television shows that portray those who practice homosexuality and their lifestyle in a very positive light. The intent is to force people, through political correctness and other forms of intimidation, to either accept homosexuality as a normal and even beautiful, or to keep silent.

Well, now, your problem is -- and this brings us back to where we started -- those very mores you're so attached to. Because as well as the officially recognised "tolerated intolerances" of the law, there are all these other intolerances which are more wide-ranging but less narrowly-binding. Remember the whole spectrum of acceptability thing where an act might be required, encouraged, discouraged or forbidden? This is all about the performance or non-performance of an act being tolerable or intolerable. And it's about the imposition of mores as informal society-wide rules of behaviour, lacking the enforcement of law but largely respected as having authority and requiring conformity under the threat of social approbation and exclusion. It's about imposing respectable behaviour on the irresponsible by making certain standards customary. In short, it's about mores. We, the Elders of Sodom, think this is an infantile approach to ethics, one suited to wayward children rather than mature adults, but we tolerate it because you are so very attached to it.

It's quite ironic, then, that this system of mores you cling to so dearly becomes the very mechanism by which you're pressured into following standards of respectable behaviour you disagree with, that changes in the times have brought changes in customs such that the weight of moral judgement, social disapproval, is now on you, compelling you to speak with respect or not at all. You abrogate your ethical judgement to the authority of public opinion, and public opinion tells you to shut the fuck up, you bigot.

Understand: we, the Elders of Sodom, say that you need not feel bound by these mores. We are, as we have always been, opposed to such a puerile system, offering you a society of free speech, rejecting censorship in any form, and a society of free thought, denying the legitimacy of public opinion. If you wish to join the cause, take a stand for ethical autonomy in the face of societal coercion, all you need do is cross the line and about-face. You will find yourself seeing this morality malarky from a whole new angle.

Until you do so, we simply find it amusing that you are hoisted on your own petard, that your own devotion to an infantile morality has come back and bitten you on the ass. It's beautiful, really.

This is clear, calculated manipulation, and is virtually constant. Thankfully, there is a large percentage of Americans that will never surrender their knowledge that homosexuality is an evil that, if allowed to spread, will eventually cause great harm to our culture and our society. It is a form of sexual deviance that undercuts the institution of the family, and demeans all notions of normalcy and purity. It is truly a battle between concepts of good and evil.

How large a percentage? You seem worried that it's not as large as it once was, that where "every" world culture has at one point or another reviled homosexuality, where "everyone" once "understood homosexuality for what it was", slowly now that percentage is eroding. You fear the gays and their supporters, the liberal media with their homosexual agenda, the family and friends "deceived" into acceptance, the shift in public opinion that now renders your position uncomfortable, widely condemned as contrary to the values of society at large. You say a large percentage of Americans will never surrender their belief (as if America mattered any more than the next nation in a supposedly universal moral system like, say, your pseudo-Christianity). But that is exactly what you're afraid of, isn't it?

Your fear that this will happen is well founded. The New Era outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom is well on its way. But the reason that you find this a fearful prospect is fundamentally irrational. Let's trace the logic here. You fear homosexuality being allowed to spread. So what? You fear it will cause great harm to society. How so? You fear it will undercut the institution of the family. Why would it? You fear that it debases all standards of normalcy and purity. What makes you fear this? It is a form of sexual deviance.

So it is a different way of having sex and difference is disallowed in principle. Conformity is good and diversity is bad, deviance; this is a standard in its own right -- normalcy. Indeed, the introduction of difference in an otherwise homogenous culture is bad, contamination; this is also a standard in its own right -- purity. By accepting diversity we challenge these principles on which the deviant is excluded as abnormal, contaminating. There's a bit of a logical leap but we must presume you see the institution of the family as dependent on these principles, the principles themselves as dependent on the exclusion of a negative. Without the low status of the negative, the normal and pure cannot be ascribed a high status in contrast, as good. Presumably in fearing a threat to the institution of marriage you see it not as a positive thing in its own right, but as a positive thing primarily because it is normal and pure in comparison to the negative -- the abnormal, the impure... the deviant.

We are saddened that you cannot see the institution of marriage as a positive thing in its own right. We hope that such disregard of its intrinsic values -- love, sharing, committment, stability, the provision of an environment of care for children, and so on -- does not become commonplace, as this can only lead to an errant focus on marriages being "normal" and "pure" to the neglect of these other principles, on the absence of negatives rather than the presence of positives. If it means little to you that a marriage is loving, sharing, committed and stable, providing an environment of care to children, I would suggest your attitude is the one more likely to undercut the institution and cause great harm to society, fostering unloving and unstable marriages of selfish partners who lack commitment, where children are neglected -- because, after all, what matters is normalcy and purity. It doesn't matter that the marriage is one of convenience, a sham fractured by endless arguments and abuse, as long as it's not a deviant marriage. As long as it's not, say, a gay marriage, or a mixed-race marriage, because that would demean all standards of normalcy and purity.

For society to sanction homosexuality, either politically or in the minds and hearts of people, or both, is a dangerous thing. It would be equally dangerous for society to sanction any behavior that is wrong. Some societies sanction polygamy, and those societies never prosper. Some societies have sanctioned bestiality, resulting in harmful effects. When and if the tide of majority opinion shifts over to the side of granting homosexuality the status of "normal" and even commendable behavior, our culture and society, as we know them, will be doomed. This is not meant as a prophesy, just the realization that all purposefully wrong activity has negative results.

Some societies have sanctioned human sacrifice. Some societies have sanctioned ritual cannibalism. Because we consider these unsanctionable, should we now refuse to sanction the similarly unusual form of worship known as Christian communion? The normal way to worship is to sing and pray, after all; to carry out a ritual based on consuming the blood and body of a sacrificial victim is clearly an aberrant behaviour, a perversion of what religion should be. But then Christian communion is neither human sacrifice nor ritual cannibalism, just as homosexuality is neither polygamy nor bestiality. Whether or not some society in the past sanctioned this or that act is not really relevant in the discussion of a completely different act.

So will a society that sanctions homosexuality prosper or suffer? All societies prosper and suffer with the rise and fall of empires within or without, but many of those outlined above, in which homosexuality was indeed sanctioned, did rather well for rather a long time. The cultures of the neolithic Near-East left rather a large impression on the world. Classsical Greece made quite a big historical impact too. The new Republic of Sodom will, we can assure you, be aiming to surpass all cultures, ancient and modern, in terms of liberty, equality, vibrancy and fertility -- in terms of the health, in short, of our society's philosophical foundations -- with longevity a prize to pursue if we can first achieve vitality and justice.

Our diversity will stand us in good stead, we think.

The attempt to sanction and legitimize something so obviously immoral and abhorrent is unprecedented in our history. There has never been something of this magnitude, which threatens to undermine fundamental moral principles, decency and the family.

The actual sanctioning is not at all unprecedented, but we, the Elders of Sodom, do humbly admit that there may never have been an attempt such as ours, a conscious and deliberate rallying to a cause that was not aimed at simply establishing a new moral order in place of the old, a new ideology in place of the tired dogma of the obsolete regime, but rather at entirely dismantling the very system of mores. From a history of endless revolutions co-opted by demagogues, inevitably transformed to new tyrannies, we have learned our lesson. The last line of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom says all that need be said about the pipe dream schemes of utopia, the manifestos of movements run by madmen:

Fuck that shit.

It may well be that never before has the attempt been made to rebuild Sodom in the human soul, not as a grandly ordered structure of political imperialism but as a wildly chaotic network of aesthetic republicanism. It may well be that nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted before. If so... it's about time it was.

Many who promote homosexuality as an acceptable "lifestyle" are mistaken in their views and demonstrate bad motives. Instead of seeking to secure fair treatment for gay people, often what they really are seeking to do is to silence and discredit anyone who takes a stand on any issue for moral reasons. Their motive is really to attack spiritually-based concepts and goodness in general and those who express such ideas. They themselves know, consciously or subconsciously, that they are not living up to standards of moral behavior that they know about, so they strike out against those who are trying to stand up for moral principles. Currently, the manifestation of this mentality is seen in its most fervent form related to the issue of homosexuality.

We, the Elders of Sodom, say our motives are clear and open. We seek not just to secure fair treatment for gay people but to establish the foundations of fair treatment for all through the rhetorical demolition of your notions of normality and purity as "moral". We mock your infantile idea that the most important problems in the world are the result of Evil Scary Magic Forces, and attack the far more substantial problems that result from this notion in the shape of prejudice and persecution of those you seek to make an emblem of those Evil Scary Magic Forces. We seek to show the vacuity of those "moral principles" that validate homophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, or any such bigotry. We live up to our own standards, not yours, because we would not lower ourselves to your abject paucity of integrity. Homosexuality is our current battleground but we have fought and continue to fight on other fronts. The Nation of Sodom was once a Black Nation. The Elders of Sodom were once the Elders of Zion.

For a large portion of our society not to see homosexuality as harmful is disturbing, but not surprising. America is currently suffering from a huge deficit in moral clarity and courage. It is also not surprising that people who stand up for truth and moral principles are often persecuted by others for those ideals. Society sanctions extreme depictions of violence in the print media as well as in movies and television. The same is true of depictions of alcohol and drug use, the demeaning of women by rap "artists," etc., etc. America's moral mercury is falling fast. Divorce is at all time highs; abortions occur in the thousands every year; violence against women is high; corruption in virtually every corner of our society is rampant; gross materialism is a defining hallmark of our society, and an addiction to anything and everything sexual is apparent everywhere. America is sick, physically, morally and spiritually, and is going downhill "like a snowball headed for hell."

America is not falling, David Cosson. Sodom is rising. We are rising to depict the violence you perpetrate, to show what you do in the print media and the visual media. We are rising to depict the violence you engender with your corrosive disregard for individual ethics, your attempts to persuade others to abrogate their faculties of judgement in favour of infantile morality. We lay the blame for alcoholism and drug abuse, the demeaning of women, divorce rates, abortions, domestic violence, gross materialism -- all of these ills you label as "corruption" -- we lay the blame for these squarely at your door. You have become children teaching your own children that they cannot and should not exercise an independent ethical judgement, that their own selfish desires and irrational disgusts are "God-given intuition" of what is right and wrong, that societal mores, which is to say public opinion, which is to say peer pressure should hold more stock for them than empathy and reason. You revere the folly of the many, and curse wisdom itself.

But America is not falling, David Cosson. It is only you who are on your knees, looking down into the gutter. Sodom is rising, as a bright and morning star. Raise up your eyes to see the glory before you, the eternal city of flames and salt, the city of our naked flesh.

The fight against having homosexuality forced down American's throats at every turn is an important moral battle. The homosexual advocates are fighting hard to put down opposing voices of morality and principle. The tide of homosexuality as an open, accepted and embraced practice can be turned if people understand that experiencing repulsion towards homosexual practices is a normal result of one's God-given intuition.

The tide cannot be turned, David Cosson, not by one fool standing on the shore and trying to command the waves, not by a million fools. Because even those cowards and fools unwilling to challenge their repulsion, those who insist, in overweaning arrogance, that their "intuition" is divinely inspired, in making such a claim, explicitly admit to being ruled by prejudice rather than reason, revealing also a conceit that they could not possibly be wrong, a heinous pride that is entirely at odds with their claimed Christian philosophy.

The tide cannot be turned, David Cosson, because you and others like you undermine the very ethics of the moral system you espouse. Your fearful, hateful disgust undermines the principles of faith and hope and charity you claim to put so much stock in. That you maintain that this intuitive -- which is to say irrational -- prejudice is "God-given" demonstrates a breathtaking pride that puts the lie to any claim of Christian humility. You are the worm in the apple of your own religion, David Cosson, eating it from within.

Perhaps you should wonder how you will be judged by your own God for what you've done to his religion.

People should not feel guilty that they are repulsed by the idea of two men or two women engaged in unnatural sexual acts. They should not let those who choose to support homosexuality intimidate them or make them feel that by standing for something important they are "intolerant" or hateful people. They should not be deceived by the lie that homosexuality is "not about sex," but about men and women merely seeking loving relationships. They should act lovingly towards anyone who is gay and not judge or condemn them, but they should also realize that opposing this unnatural practice is not hateful; it is a stand for principle, and a moral imperative.

You still don't get it, do you? You still can only comprehend the ethics of human interaction in terms of absolute imperatives born of unreasoned disgust and shame, loathing and self-loathing, in terms of mores. We don't want you to feel fucking guilty. We do not seek to intimidate you into respectable behaviour. Those are your tactics. These are the tactics used on children who lack the maturity to act ethically without the threats of punishment and shame. These are the tactics used by children who think that they are adults and must teach others to be "good" boys and girls who follow the rules. We will only use these tactics on you as a last resort. If you persist in acting and thinking as children you will be treated as such, to be scolded and cajoled. We would much prefer that you just grow the fuck up.

God created man "upright," but homosexuality is not part of that creation. It is perverted, ugly, and contrary to nature. It is a conscious choice of individuals about who they want to fornicate with, and it is wrong, regardless if its devotees are confused about the ultimate cause of their abnormal attraction, or its appropriateness. America must wake up to this attack and resist the intimidation and pressure being exerted unceasingly to silence voices of reason and morality and to force everyone to accept homosexuality as good and natural. Think of the consequences, and reject this "invention" of mankind.

Nothing which exists in nature is contrary to it. The strangest things are part of nature, from the most twisted tree that was made so by its environment, to the ugliest toad that was born that way. A gnarled tree is not contrary to nature, nor is the most odious toad, but you fear these as "unnatural", like a child in the dark wood of fairytales fears every knot of wood and hopping thing. Whether our sexual orientation seems as twisted to you as a gnarled tree, as ugly as an odious toad, it is no less "natural". No, this "unnatural" nonsense is merely the superstitious hokum of the creationist who believes in behavioural decrees as aspects of a grand and unified design, an absoute truth writ in the spiritual order, manifest in the natural order and to be obeyed in the social order. Hogwash.

If America was not so in thrall to the conceited notion that its own place within this design is a matter of manifest destiny, that it has been blessed with God's Truth and made an instrument of his will, America might wake up to the fact that this "invention" of mankind, this system of thought in which mores are confused with norms, has consequences far worse than those that come from one man fucking another and no one denouncing it as an abomination in the eyes of God. If Americanist pseudo-Christians were not so vain as to believe their bigotry to be divine revelation, they might wake up to their vanity in thinking that being ordinary, being normal is enough to make one "good".

That prophet you quoted had something to say about such vanity, but the first and last line, the one and only line, of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom says all that need be said, we think, much more concisely:

Fuck that shit.

Anyway, we thank you, David Cosson, for your contribution to the debate, your choice of this blog as a publication venue, and we hope that you have found our response stimulating if nothing else. We ourselves have found it most enjoyable and inspirational, and you can rest assured that we will endeavour to ensure that future meetings of the International Sodomite Conspiracy feature discussion of the issues you have raised. But then these matters are always high on the (homosexual) agenda. Should you wish to read the minutes of these meetings, by the way, you will find them a matter of public record, both here and elsewhere, more and more, in the writings of queers and freaks in the print media, across the internet, in the words of heroes in novels and stories, in movies and TV shows, as opinions voiced in the pubs and by the water cooler and, increasingly, day by day, everywhere you turn, as our project for world domination proceeds apace.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

CRY HAVOC...

And let slip the dogs of words!

This is just a wee announcement for anyone in the Glasgow area. As you might know the GSFWC has done a few group readings in the past, in conjunction with the Edinburgh-based Writer's Bloc. Well, we've come of age and decided to go it alone. In order to keep the spoken word performance collective thingy distinct from the Circle (i.e. we're open to folk from outside the Circle who want to get in on the fun), we thought it best to set it up as it's own thing. And so has been born, lo, the mongrel mutt known as Word Dogs.

We have a Yahoo Group, open to the public, for anyone who wants to be keep abreast of what's happening.

We also have a MySpace, where you can friend us and make us feel loved.

Most importantly, though, we have a GIG! Next Wednesday! Eek!

OK, so I could have probably made this announcement a bit sooner, but I've been busy. Anyway, here's the dealio.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Glorifying Terrorism

It looks like Farah Mendlesohn's anthology of short stories sticking the middle finger up to the bullshit UK legislation which criminalises "glorifying terrorism" is going to press even as we speak. And there's now a website where you can go and order your very own copy. So go on. It's for a good cause, and there's some great stuff in there. There's even a wee Jack Flash story from meself, with exploding airships and everything.

Friday, January 12, 2007

The Dufus Dollar

I know it's old news but the whole Laurell K Hamilton rant thing (wherein, for those who do not know, she has a rare old rant about "negative fans" laying into her on her own forum, or telling her how much they hate her recent books at signing sessions, then goes all Crazy Lady who treats her characters as real people and Genius Author whose books are too good for the likes of you) passed me by and when I finally got round to seeing the fallout -- on Scalzi's blog for example -- the conversation had pretty much moved on. Anyway, so I read what she said, then Scalzi's post about evil-wicked-witch-flying-devil-monkeys (or shit-flinging screech-monkeys or screeching howler monkeys or whatever the phrase was... look, I can't remember off-hand... oh, go and read it for yourself), and I sorta thought to meself, well... if she's telling readers who wanna whine in her face at how they don't like her books anymore --- in fact they don't like her anymore -- cause she used to be, like, really cool and her books used to be really well-written with plots and everything, but she brought in this arduer/ardeur/ordure/whatever malarky, and now it's all just boring boring boring sex, and too many pointless characters, and spelling errors because she's not getting edited properly and blah blah fuckin blah... if she wants to tell those people to GET A FUCKIN LIFE AND STOP READING THE FUCKIN BOOKS THEN, well, I'm down with that.

See, here's the thing. The whole signing session jiggery-pokery, that's, like, an event for folks who want books signed. Now, at the launch for VELLUM, pissed as I was, I wasn't too inebriated to clock that a couple of the folks getting books signed were dealers who'd cottoned on to the Dutch Tulip Craze brouhaha over the bound proofs and wanted to get in on the action at the ground floor. When someone comes up with multiple copies of the book, along with (at least) individual copies of every magazine or anthology you've ever been in, including one from waaaaaaay back, and wants them signed, lined and dated but not made out to them personally, you know they're not there as a fan. They may or may not have read it. They may or may not like it. They may never read it, or if they do they may, in fact, hate it. Whatever. They're there because they're looking at your work (for some crazy reason) as an investment, a potential collectible that may increase in value if the indications of potential success are correct.

Now, there's a part of me that thinks, well, yanno, the books are actually there to be read, motherfucker. I'm not here getting cramp in me hand and wasting valuable drinking time just so you can make a few bucks. But, at the end of the day, books are indeed products, and a dealer's investment in you is a mark of faith, so another part of me, a part which values that faith, appreciates it, that part kicks in and says, hey, so this person ain't here for the love of my work, but at least they're an ally in my goal of world domination. If they want to take out shares in my signature, so to speak, from a purely money-motivated perspective (which I think is kinda daffy), well, that's fair enough.

But the point is this: even those dealers are valuing the books, if only as a commodity to trade. Now, in the LKH rant, she talks about readers coming up and directly expressing how little they value the books. I'm not going to quote but clearly what's got right under her skin is a few people waiting in line, book in hand, to say, to all intents and purposes, this book sucks, or even, you suck. We can pussy-foot about the issue, rationalise about potential misperceptions, but it doesn't really matter. Whether this is actually meant as a compliment but actually turns into an unconscious criticism of a change in direction ("We really like your movies, Mr Allen, especially the early funny ones"), or as a respectful but intentional critique ("you know, I hate to say it, but I think you've gone a bit off-track with this one, cause yer early stuff was superb but this just doesn't work for me at all, and I really wish you'd go back to writing the way you used to"), or as a deliberately hostile and insulting reproach ("you used to be good, but this book is a pile of shit"), it is still expressing a devaluation of the book that's being signed. That person is coming up and saying, hello, I'd like you to sign this book for me, despite the fact that I actually don't really rate it at all.

So why the fuck do you want it signed, motherfucker? Why the fuck are you buying it in the first place?

Yes, it's entirely possible that LKH is exaggerating the tactlessness of the phraseology, or being a bit brittle and precious in the face of a fan who's simply lacking in certain social graces. But at the heart of it, this is about the egoplop (the inverse of egoboo) of someone actually making a concerted effort to tell you, to your face, personally, that they are buying your work in spite of its lack of value to them. And I don't find her scenario in extremis ("I hate this book and I hate you for writing it") actually that unimaginable.

Now part of what makes this egoplop so, well, ploppy is that the signing session is otherwise, for an author, all about the egoboo. Oh, sure, ye can pretend to yerself that meeting the fans is about connecting to them as individuals but there's an unavoidable status differential between the writer and the fan in that situation. It's like a goddamn line of people paying homage to your work, to you. They're not going to come up and say, hey, I hear you're a big fan of Delany; I love his stuff; have you read PHALLOS? You're not really meeting them as individuals on that level. No this is an event of artificially heightened egoboo. For some writers it's even uncomfortably so. I can't say I don't puff up if someone says, hey, yer book fuckin rocks, man. But in a lot of ways, that sort of praise makes me squirm. What can ye say but, shucks, thanks? What can ye give back to someone who gives you that egoboo when there's no time to really talk, to bring out of them what they do that's cool, that would make you say to them: hey, man, that fuckin rocks!

So the signing session becomes this little bubble of egoboo, and whether you're grounded enough to feel kinda awkward and bashful that people are coming up to you (to you!) to say cool things about your work, or whether yer an arrogant tosser that expects that sort of tribute as your due, or whether indeed (as is, I suspect, commonly the case) it's kind of an ungodly mix of the two, with the arrogant tosser locked up in the back of your head and the grounded, humble self who's simply grateful that someone likes yer stuff guarding the cage door with a big pointy stick and smacking at the arrogant tosser when he gets too uppity -- shut up, we're not a genius -- however you react to that egoboo, the whole situation is such that someone coming in with a big fat dollop of egoplop to lay on you... man, that's gonna be a right fucking turd in the punch bowl.

Hello, I hate your book and I hate you for writing it. Can you sign it?

Aside: Q&A sessions don't quite have that same thing, because it's an audience/performer relationship, so the egoboo comes from getting good questions and giving good answers, people demonstrating savvy with yer book and you being interesting in response. In a Q&A session, I'd say, a pointed question is pretty cool. You can easily imagine some reader who thinks you've gone off-track wanting to find out why, where you're going in future, all that sort of shit. No problem. Fundamentally, the writer is there to give good interview, and good interview comes from pertinent questions, whether the slant of them is positive or negative. And, personally, I much prefer the sort of event (like in the Paradox Club in Warsaw) where afterwards that status relationship is abandoned entirely and you just mingle and talk about whatever shit comes to mind. Then you really do get to meet the readers as individuals, as equals. Which is cool. But these are not the set up we're talking about here. Here we're talking about an event so fundamentally egobooic in nature that it seems just, well, kinda churlish to piss on the parade. How do you respond to that churlishness?

Hello, I hate your book and I hate you for writing it. Can you sign it?

You hate my book? So, uh, why exactly are you buying it again?

I think that's a perfectly valid question. It may not be a business-savvy question. It may not be the sort of question an author would actually want to ask that person. Hell, I can easily imagine an editor or agent or bookseller or any number of people with investments in that work, standing behind the author, slapping them upside the head and saying, shut the fuck up, dipshit, and let them buy the fucking book. Suck it up. You're a writer. You gotta roll with the blows, take the negative criticism. Don't argue with the customer, and so on, and so on. It's all part of the One Big Rule in which the author must never, under any circumstances, bite the hand that feeds them. This means editors, publishers, agents, reviewers and fans.

And Scalzi's right, in that respect. Going off on a rabid rant at your detractors is going to make you look like an asstard and just rally them to the cause of mockery and mob howling-screechiness. LKH falls into this trap with the self-justification a la Anne Rice, the "you just don't get or can't take the edgy wonderfulness of my work" schtick. I've never read any of her fiction so I have no basis other than this rant to judge it by. Unfortunately, she makes a good job of presenting herself as a victim of her own success and the sycophancy that engenders, a writer who, in the face of uncritical adulation, has lost their ruthlessness in self-critique and, with the sales figures that come from huge success, has become too powerful a cash cow for an editor to risk alienating with that red pencil. Add to that the "my characters are people to me" and LKH only succeeds in suggesting that her detractors may well have a point. I think this is a shame because that puffed-up defensiveness is a bad (over)reaction to the egoplop, but if you strip it away, there's another reaction to the egoplop which is actually not so crazy.

Hello, I hate your book and I hate you for writing it. Can you sign it?

You hate my book? So, uh, why exactly are you buying it again?

But we're not meant to ask that question, are we? Not even quietly, politely, in a tone of genuine confusion, as a sincere request for information. We're writers. We know what side our bread is buttered on. We know you don't argue with reviewers, don't piss off editors, don't push your agent needlessly (though note the "needlessly" caveat there) and you don't ever, EVER, EVER rock the big fat boat of fandom which is sailing in with oodles and oodles of money to dock in the harbour of our bank accounts (oodles... heh... aye, right!... but ye know what I mean). No, that person is a customer, and at that signing session, why, you're a service sector wage slave to their whims. They want to drop a turd in the punch bowl, you're meant to wipe their ass with a smile and wave them on their way.

Fuck that shit.

Lo, I come as SF heretic! Lo, I come to ask the unaskable! Yea, verily, and to give the fucking obvious fucking answer! Why would someone go to an LKH signing session, wait in line, and ask her to sign her latest novel while simultaneously expressing a deep hatred of her recent work, a hatred so profound that it extends to a bitter resentment of the writer herself, a resentment so extreme, in fact, that this person has clearly felt the need to express it, personally, face-to-face, at such an egobooic event, oblivious to the fact that this is, in no small way, like going to the author's birthday party and dropping a turd in the punch bowl? Why would they do this?

Because they're a fan, for crying out loud. Duh!

Not because they're a fan of LKH, I mean, but because they have that peculiar aspect of the fan mentality which is all about devotion, loyalty, completism, continuity dependency, mythos immersion. I know that attitude well, btw. I'm not excluding meself here, not standing on a "writer" side of the fence and pointing at the weirdos on the "fan" side. I just think there's a rather obvious facet of fandom which, hell, actually emerges as an explanation on the Scalzi LKH thread but which is not mined fully, to my mind, for its ramifications.

So, the reason those LKH haters are still buying her work, or borrowing and reading it, or reading the reviews, or hanging out on the forums to bitch about how shit it is now, or going to her signing to put a turd in the punch bowl: it's because once upon a time they thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, and being fans -- which is to say fanatics -- the devotion, the loyalty, the completism, the continuity dependency, the mythos immersion, the whole deep and profound investment in the franchise is of such a power that it takes a truly heinous act of hackery to turn them away, to stop them, once and for all, from continuing to -- if nothing else -- hope and pray that the glory days might come again. The more hardcore the fan, it would seem the more heinous that hackery must be, because if yer hate is turd-in-the-punch-bowl deep and you haven't just walked away in disgust, then by fuck, but you must have been a devout acolyte.

Me, I can understand the casual disgruntlement with low-level bitchery, the disaffection that wasn't enough to stop me from watching a few seasons of Buffy regardless of how I thought they'd long since jumped the shark or just plain lost it. At points, some of that old sparkle shone through but, frankly, for much of the later seasons I though Buffy was pretty sucky. It was on telly though, it was brain candy, and, hell, I never quite thought it was the sheer blinding brilliance that some of me mates accorded to it. Were I to approach Joss Wheedon at a signing session I would tactfully express my admiration for Angel and say nothing of the suckiness of the soap opera episodes of whiny Buffy's love problems. In fact, I might well pick out some of the later episodes -- the musical, or the episode where Joyce dies -- as two of the best of the whole run, as great TV, period. But I just never had enough invested in the show to ever want to bitch to him, face to face, about how dreadful the whole Evil Willow storyline was, to my mind, how Adam was just cringeworthy, and so on. It's no skin off my nose, really.

But we're not talking about whiling away an hour of an evening, watching a dodgy SF show cause, well, it's on, so what the fuck, why not? This is about the type of emotional investment in a franchise that results in continued support despite a conscious knowledge -- nay, a vitriol-laden resentment -- that said franchise has long since become a steaming pile of dogshit, unworthy of such adulation. This is about throwing good money after bad. This is about -- in line with the concept of the "Pink Pound" -- the Dufus Dollar.

OK, so I apologise for any offence that term may cause. I swithered between the too-offensive "Dumbass" and the too-neutral "Devotee". "Dufus", I think, is a not-so-dismissive term, the sort of insult given with a wry shake of the head to a mate who keeps getting back with the ex who's put them through the wringer three times now and shows no sign of not, yet again, making their life a misery. A dufus is not a cretin, a moron, a dumbass -- just an otherwise sensible person who has, perhaps through naivety as much as foolishness, fucked up, allowed themself to be royally reamed. A dufus is a patsy, a schmuck. In fact, maybe this should be called The Schmuck Buck.

So what do I mean by the Dufus Dollar.

I mean the money that so many people paid to see the last two Star Wars movies despite coming out of Episode None and wanting to burn every piece of memorabilia they ever owned in a funeral pyre of childhood dreams. I mean the money that so many people paid to see the last Matrix movie despite falling asleep in the second one during the interminably turgid pseudo-philosophical bullshit and sitting awed during the action sequences at just how great the CGI was in reducing everything to the uninvolving artificiality of bad computer game graphics. I mean the money that I won't be paying if Peter Jackson's next movie clocks in at anything over one and a half hours because I don't go to the cinema to be bored to fucking tears, thanks very much.

Star Wars Episode None: The Phantom Plot sucked. I learned my lesson. I didn't go to see either Attack of the Clowns or Revenge of the Shit. I have no intention of ever spending any money, time or willpower on the steaming pile of excrement George Lucas has made of the thing I once loved.

Matrix 2: Revulsion sucked. I learned my lesson. I did not go to see the last one and, again, have no intention of ever making any effort to see it. Life is too short to waste on pointless drivel that spews out stoner wank randomly interspersed with crappy SFX set pieces that belong in Mortal Kombat 10.

King Kong sucked. A bloated and boring lobotomy of a movie that might just be salvageable if every single scene were edited down by to half the length. Given the clear symptoms of blockbusteritis Jackson is exhibiting in the wake of The Lord of the Rings -- which at least had the excuse of being based on a tedious and turgid doorstop of a book wherein the protagonists spend one million fucking pages fucking climbing up a fucking mountain -- and given the reuse of the shallowly unreconstructed trope of the "degenerate race" (which leads me to suggest the monicker of "Foremost Racist Director of our Day" for Jackson and to expect his next project to be an equally blithely thoughtless remake of Birth of a Nation), I have now also learned my lesson with Jackson and will not be spending my hard earned cash on his next venture, not without a surfeit of rave reviews from reliable sources.

But what of those who don't learn these lessons? Yes, you know who you are. Don't give me that benefit of the doubt crap. Sure, there are reasons and excuses, and it's not incomprehensible that you'd give some leeway here or there after maybe only one steaming pile of shite. I'm not advocating a knee-jerk dismissal of a writer or director's entire future canon on the basis of one turkey. But I would suggest that when you throw good money after bad like that, when you trudge ungaily along to the cinema to see Solaris 4: Ressurection, knowing full well that Solaris 2: The Quickening was shit and Solaris 3: Rise of the Robots was even worse, then you are spending the Dufus Dollar.

And when you stand in line to buy the latest LKH and get it signed by the author despite the arduer/ardeur/ordure/adieu-to-good-writing thingy (whatever the fuck he/she/it is) having sent the series into a downward spiral of plotless pornoccult potboilery, well, maybe the exchange should be something like this:

Hello, I hate your book and I hate you for writing it. Can you sign it?

You hate my book? So, uh, why exactly are you buying it again?

Because you used to write books I love and I'm hoping you'll do so again. I mean, come on. Why are you writing books I hate now?

Uh, because you're buying them. I, uh, thought you liked them.

Because it's a good bet that LKH likes her own books. It's a good bet that at every point in the chain she's getting positive feedback from those with too much invested in her as a business to say, actually, honey, this book sucks; we hate it. And it's a good bet that the ultimate validation comes from those who are spending the fucking money on them. So of course she brings up her sales figures as a defence; that's a big-ass pile of people all sending a crystal clear message that they want what she's offering, that they're happy to pay hard cash for what she's selling. So, uh, they must like it, right? They wouldn't just be buying them in the vain hope that one day she'll go back to writing the way she used to, would they? Clearly, LKH does not understand the Dufus Dollar, the market force of misguided faith. Poor dear.

The sad thing is, in a way, shorn of all the egoistic puffery and rantiness, there's a pertinent point hidden at the heart of that screed, where she tells her "negative fans": if you hate the books, don't bitch at me; just don't buy them, don't read them. If only! If only people would give it up -- just let it go, people, just step back from the steaming pile of arduer/ardeur/ordure and walk away. If only people would stop giving George Lucas money, please for the love of all that's holy, please! If only people would spend their money on -- I dunno -- Morrocan Black instead of the Matrix 3s of this world, cause I'm reckoning ye'd probably get a more engaging experience from the former. If only people would look at the listings of the latest overblown schlockbusters involving people running away a lot (and I mean a lot) from, oh, dinosaurs or savages or giant leech-monsters or explosions or Martian war machines or killer bees or electricity-come-alive or screeching howler monkeys or whatever, and say, you know what, I'd rather buy a powerdrill, carry out a self-lobotomy and have done with it, cause this guy's last movie sucked wet farts out of dead pigeons and I'm not gonna be suckered by this shit again. What do I look like, a fucking dufus?

If only. But until you -- yes, you... there at the back, wearing the thingumy with the whatchamacallit on it... you -- until you (OK, OK, you and I... nobody's perfect; I saw Alien 4 in the cinema, for shame) stop throwing a fucking budget at these motherfuckers, sending money to them by way of the bookshops or cinemas and the publishers or studios, then the money men will continue to tell them, yeah, yeah, this is fucking great, fucking awesome! Man, you should see the returns we're pulling in on this! People love your stuff. Just keep right on doing what you're doing. Which is whatever the fuck you want to, as long as it sells.

You know, as much as I suspect the critics are right, that LKH has joined the ranks of those whose head Jeff's Evil Monkey will, one day, one day, collect for crimes against literature, I've gotta say, the fact that she comes out with the "If you don't like them, don't buy them," attitude earns her a few brownie points from me. Her bafflement at the attitude of "negative fans", her defensive rantings -- man, if she was a true hack she'd know fine well about the Dufus Dollar, and she'd just keep her mouth shut while she laughed all the way to the bank with her bags full of the stuff. Or try to get even more.

-- Don't worry, she'd say. Just stick with it, and you'll see where I'm going. I mean, you love the mythos, right? And you've bought them all so far? You're caught up in the continuity? So just hold on a bit longer. OK, you didn't like this one; you'll love the next. It's all going somewhere. Trust me. Just keep buying. Don't look at the man behind the curtain. Actually, uh, don't look at the steaming pile of shit that's right in front of the curtain. Just. Keep. Buying.